Opinion

On October 23, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, testified about his company’s cryptocurrency project at a hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee. In his testimony, Zuckerberg tried to reassure Congress that Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency would square the circle between financial inclusion and regulatory adherence, consumer privacy and proactive fraud detection. The one thing he didn’t manage to address ...

Among some intellectuals and environmentalists, it’s an article of faith that economic growth must be brought to a stop. If we fail to act, we’ll use up the planet’s resources and growth will suffer a disastrous collapse. For example, British writer George Monbiot has been advancing this point of view for quite some time. In April, he declared: Perpetual growth ...

UBS Group AG’s assets under management reached a record $2.5 trillion in the third quarter of 2019, buoyed in part by money from rich clients. Unfortunately, the world’s largest wealth manager is finding it harder to squeeze more profit out of this business; its chief executive officer Sergio Ermotti may be running out of ideas. Net profit at the Swiss ...

When political outsider Joko Widodo was first sworn in as Indonesia’s president five years ago, a little company called PT GO-JEK Indonesia was barely known. Their rise together since then has broken a technology barrier that was holding back the world’s fourth-most-populous country and promises the chance for a better future. Jokowi, as he’s known, is starting his second term ...

The aftershocks of President Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds in Syria are rumbling through the region, and a string of Lebanese officials told me last week that they fear they’re the next to be discarded by America. Lebanese politicians and security officials, in a series of off-the-record conversations, expressed concern about Trump’s acquiescence to Turkey’s invasion of Syria, and the ...

A worldwide preference for bigger, heavier cars has led to a nearly six-fold increase in the number of SUVs on the road since 2010 — and made them the second-biggest contributor to the rise in carbon dioxide emissions, the International Energy Agency reported. Only power generation is causing a bigger increase in emissions. SUVs are also the reason that oil ...

It’s not easy being the front-runner. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the leading Democratic presidential hopeful, has come under increasing attack from the rest of the pack for her backing of fellow candidate Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for All” proposal and her disinclination to explain how she’d pay for it. They’ll continue to do so as they attempt to prevent her from ...

Germany’s refusal to use fiscal policy, in the form of a big and quick stimulus, to ward off recession is a serious problem for the global economy. This excessive caution is enshrined in a balanced-budget law known as the “debt brake.” Several other countries have been emulating it, or thinking about doing so. They shouldn’t. And Germany should reconsider the ...

Snatch-and-grab is the new hallmark of Indian finance. As a banker friend in Mumbai put it to me only half-jokingly, a unit of “grabbed” cash collateral in hand is worth more than two units of hypothetical receivables. Yet this is no laughing matter. Not only is opportunistic behaviour going to worsen India’s $200 billion-plus bad loan crisis, but now that ...

WeWork’s valuation keeps sliding. SoftBank Group Corp., its largest outside investor, is now targeting $8 billion through a rescue package it’s putting together, according to Bloomberg News. But Masayoshi Son ought to be careful. While the deal may set a floor under WeWork, it could also diminish his standing along with SoftBank and its $100 billion Vision Fund. Mere months ...